The old passes away, behold the new!

So I'm prepping for a sermon this weekend on Revelation 21: 1-6a. It includes the cool verse of Jesus saying he is the greek alphabet, and also the descending of the new heaven and new earth. For all you Left Behind fans, I'm sorry to inform you that if you think you are going to be whisked away to some place other than a new earth, you might be on the wrong side of the Apocalypse.

For my prep help I've turned to Jurgen Moltmann's The Coming of God. Why? Well, it's a book on my shelf that just begged for some reading in prep for this text. And when I flipped through the table of contents, part IV is titled "New Heaven -- New Earth." Pay dirt.

Here's a little snippet of where I am right now. The big question plaquing me is: how in the world do I make this preach? Take a gander for yourself:
(p. 265, 266) ... "What is the difference between the beginning and the consummation of creation, and what distinguishes 'the first heaven and the first earth' from 'the new heaven and the new earth'? It is the different presence of the Creator in the commuity of those he has created. Creation-in-the-beginning is 'finished' (Gen 2:2) in God's Sabbath. God blesses all the works of his creation through his resting presence in them. All six days point to the seventh day, and everything that is created is created for this festival of the Creator's, and is blessed in it. But the creation is created anew so that it may embrace the 'new Jerusalem' and become the home of God's Shekinah (Isa 65; Ezek 27; Rev 21). The sabbath in the time of the first creation links this world and the world to come. It is the presence of God in the time of those he has created or, to put it more precisely, the dynamic presence of eternity in time, which links beginning and end, thus awakening rembrance and hope. The eschatological indwelling of God in the 'new heaven and the new earth' is the presence of God in the space of his created beings. That which went up with Israel out of bondage in Egypt, that which found a temporally restricted dwelling in Jerusalem on Mount Zion--that very same presence will fill and interpentrate the great spaces creation, 'heaven and earth', and will bring to all heavenly and earthly creatures eternal life and perfect justice and righteousness: God's Shekinah."

yikes. love it!